Nostalgia can be a tricky thing to work with in the film industry. While it can bring old film series back into the modern age, sometimes that can backfire.

Actor Ben Stiller unfortunately had to deal with that after the release of 2016’s Zoolander 2, which was received poorly by fans and reviewers, landing in the 20% area on Rotten Tomatoes and only making $56.7 million at the box office, according to Box Office Mojo, out of an estimated $50 million budget, according to IMDb.

This negatively affected Stiller, according to ComicBook.com. He would open up about the mental struggles from the project’s release on David Duchovny’s Fail Better podcast, talking about how he thought people wanted this film; as soon as he saw the bad reviews and lack of attention, he began to doubt himself. “I thought everybody wanted this. And then it’s like, ‘Wow, I must have really f****d this up. Everybody didn’t go to it. And it’s gotten these horrible reviews,'” Stiller mused.

Stiller is one to work on projects he finds enjoyable and funny and with Zoolander 2 somewhat reflecting on what he found funny, he would begin to question what he found funny and his comedy. “It really freaked me out because I was like, ‘I didn’t know it was that bad?'” he remarked. “It was definitely blindsiding to me. And it definitely affected me for a long time.”

However, Stiller still found a bright side to the situation, as the film’s release gave him a moment to sit, reflect, and focus on developing other projects that he was interested in, and they weren’t just comedies. 

Stiller is successful with his projects, as Apple TV+’s thriller series Severance made a huge splash with audiences in 2022. The series focuses on a group of workers working at a corporation that splits the memories of their employees between inside and outside work but can never be remembered at the same time.

Stiller, who directs the series, said it was something that he wanted to explore himself and it was fun to have that ability and grow as a director. Stiller elaborated, “So it’s really fun to explore different ideas and different tones both as a director and an actor. So if something’s good, that’s really what excites me about it.”

While the memories of the past can hurt and hold even actors down, Stiller has found the strength to continue making stories that both he and his fans can enjoy.